Chief Football Writer for The Age

Cleared: Essendon doctor Bruce Reid had all charges against him dropped. Photo: Jason South

The AFL's decision to turn a blind eye to the welfare failings of Essendon's doctor Bruce Reid reeks of a hunger for closure so ravenous that any meaningful message that needed to be sent to the game's medical industry has also been devoured.

The settlement with the veteran club medico who questioned the character of the three commissioners who would have judged him and referred to the AFL as a ''malevolent organisation'' has also embarrassed the competition's governing body.

The most senior doctor at Essendon had to be held accountable for conduct unbecoming to the game in that he failed to protect his players. That he could not do his medical duty and did not fight harder for their welfare let down his profession and his footballers.

Those AFL executives, led by the dealmaker Gillon McLachlan, have chosen to exonerate Reid reportedly for the sake of resolution claiming the men most guilty at Essendon have been punished. Reading between the lines, what they have done instead is demonstrate that expediency rules at Docklands and if you truly choose to fight all the way to court you can avoid punishment.

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The AFL believed the angry Bombers doctor would have failed in his legal attempt to have his case heard by an independent body. That decision would have taken place in the Supreme Court on Thursday and then matters would have turned ugly.

Surely, though, some principles are worth fighting for - warts and all.

Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick said as much when he handed down the penalties on Essendon, underlining player welfare as a key foundation of the competition and one that had to be protected at all costs.

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou has repeatedly rammed home the imperative that the club doctor must overrule the high-performance boss.

Reid did not design the potentially harmful and woefully irresponsible drugs program put in place by coach James Hird and his sport science team in late 2011. Nor did he approve of it.

Should Essendon players find themselves charged with doping violations or fall victim to long-term side-effects from the drugs and methods used on them, those failings will not be of Reid's doing. But that a man of his experience did not work more vigorously to ensure the safety of the environment in which he worked is a indictment on him.

Reid's warning letter to Hird and his former football manager Paul Hamilton, written in January 2012, was exhibit A in the AFL's case against Essendon. The doctor saw it as proof he had tried to prevent the pharmacologically experimental environment and yet his only explanation as to why the program continued until August of that year was that he was frozen out by the high-performance team.

So many of the major players in this sorry saga claimed they knew nothing of what took place and yet Reid did know and could not prevent it.

He never took his concerns to the board. He was close friends with former chairman David Evans and yet allegedly never broached his concerns with Evans.

Reid's blind loyalty to Hird, whom he reveres, is well known. Hird has denied he ever read Reid's letter and yet Reid's recollections were vague on that denial. However, that adoration does not excuse his failure to act. His love for the club was such that he admitted in his letter he felt he was failing the Bombers by questioning their drug program. His primary obligation should always have been to the Hippocratic Oath.

The mood was celebratory in Reid's Epworth rooms on Wednesday and there is no doubt he has been a beloved figure at Windy Hill for decades. Clearly the reverence in which he is held and his years of service helped him. The AFL is nothing if not a good old boys' club.

Demetriou, having ridiculed a journalist who claimed last week that a settlement was being hammered out, will now claim that Reid has not been cleared, simply that the charges were dropped.

The AFL has also attempted to imply that the leave Reid will now take was by mutual decision with head office. Previously, the league had pushed for him to resign, which makes its capitulation even more eyebrow-raising.

The statement released was micromanaged over days, but does not include an acceptance from Reid that the commission - and notably Fitzpatrick and recently retired family court judge Linda Dessau - was neither unfair nor impartial. Which no one is suggesting. But the AFL, in choosing to roll over on Bruce Reid, has left the question unanswered.

15 comments so far

The AFL seem desperate to avoid going to court, or even to hold a hearing. Instead they want to sweep everything under the rug as quietly as possible.Essendon's players and fans deserve better. They deserve to know the whole truth. Sadly that won't happen as it appears that Demetriou is very desperate to hide something.

Commenter

Katie9

Date and time

September 19, 2013, 1:32AM

The players will get ASADA infraction notices and be banned for 2 years. Next question?

Commenter

Hammel

Location

Victoria

Date and time

September 19, 2013, 3:27PM

Sweep, sweep, sweep! The AFL has THE biggest carpet of any sporting body in the world. How this sporting body is continually allowed to blatantly sweep issues such as this under said carpet by the Melb media is breathtaking in it's complicity.

I'm glad the NRL didn't appoint Gillion McLachlan as its CEO, the bloke obviously operates without morals or a backbone.

Commenter

Mark

Date and time

September 19, 2013, 6:51AM

So the AFL blinked and the code is the lesser for it. The lesson for AFL teams and players is that those at the tip get at most a wrist slap. Or just let off as in the Reid case!

Without Caroline Wilson most of this would have been swept under the carpet.

Commenter

Jenni

Location

Camberwell

Date and time

September 19, 2013, 9:22AM

I am neither a football follower and therefore not an Essendon supporter, but I am a medico. I reads to me that Ms Wilson is accusing Dr Reid of negligence in that he failed in his duty of care to his patients (namely the football players who were subjected to the ministrations of the snakeoil merchants). This is quite an accusation to write, and I wonder if this will be followed up by a referral to the medical board? The accusation that "That he could not do his medical duty and did not fight harder for their welfare let down his profession and his footballers" is very serious. Is this journalistic hyperbole? Do you back up such accusations? WIll Dr Reid seek some redress for the slur on his professional conduct? The most interesting aspect of this supplements story is the astonishing magnitude of stupidity and gullibility shown by the leaders of this team. They they should believe the bulldust of this "scientist" Danks is remarkable. Why not homeopathy? Why not voodoo faith healers? They're as credible and as effective. If you have some snakeoil to flog, it looks like football clubs such as Essendon might be the market to target. One marvels at the circumvention of drug codes by this professional body, the AFL. If this were a cycling scandal, or Olympic athletes, one suspects the recipients of these supplements would not treated so much as innocent victims. Such hypocracy

Commenter

DrDoctor

Date and time

September 19, 2013, 9:39AM

Whatever credibility the AFL still had has just evaporated. They don't come any grubbier than this mob.

Commenter

Brendan

Location

Vic

Date and time

September 19, 2013, 11:55AM

How about the football club where 14 people were arrested for fixing matches in Australia?

Commenter

Hammel

Location

Victoria

Date and time

September 19, 2013, 3:29PM

"...the welfare failings of Essendon's doctor Bruce Reid" Really, Caro? You don't mean "alleged welfare failings"? Or do you have some information that the rest of us, including the AFL and its lawyers, don't?

Commenter

Peter

Location

Kew

Date and time

September 19, 2013, 12:17PM

It is very hard for any club, AFL or Tootgarook Football Club to get a doctor to provide any services to a club. Even AFL doctors a grossly underpaid for the hours they spend at the club.They are all part time, including the doctor who may help out at Tootgarook or Swan Hill or orbost or wherever.The football club is not their practice. They have little control of whether the players choose to go and see another doctor and get services from them. To hold a club doctor responsible for services sought elsewhere is unworkable, unfair and would result in nobody wanting to help out at any sports club. Dr. Reid did all he could to object to practices that the club had put into place, the man was kept in the dark most of the time,but his professional conduct was always excellent. Dank et al were doing all these things with outside compliant doctors. It was not Reid's responsibility to investigate this, he was too busy doing his own job at the club.Doc Reid and the other Docs at all the clubs in Australia who do these thankless, underpaid tasks are heros and we need them. Don't try and blemish a doc who was and has always done the right thing.If the doc had been punished for whatever, I would have hoped all club doctors in all types of situations would quit and the blame would partly go to you Caro.